


Edge of Human

by lyricwritesprose



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-08
Updated: 2017-06-08
Packaged: 2018-11-11 06:59:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11143251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricwritesprose/pseuds/lyricwritesprose
Summary: Right after "Let's Kill Hitler," the Doctor visits River.





	Edge of Human

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: although there's nothing explicit, this fic does hint at some nasty, nasty emotional abuse in River's early childhood. Also a certain amount of innuendo from River, because River.
> 
> Brit-picking and comma-herding by Persiflage. There is a Russian version of this fic here, by Fabiana: https://ficbook.net/readfic/6347910

I don't really have an excuse for not waking up when he came in, beyond the fact that I was very tired.

I had plenty of excuses for being tired, though. Let's see: in one day, I'd stolen a car, hijacked a time machine, got shot by Hitler, grown a new body with the most _glorious_ floomph of hair, killed a man, got shot by Nazis (which didn't matter all that much since I was still regenerating), massively inconvenienced a load more Nazis, got new clothes, got tortured by a robot version of my mother, rescued my parents from the aforementioned robot by flying an alien machine based on a weird mental connection that I didn't understand yet, and sacrificed a pretty hefty chunk of lifespan trying to correct the horrible mistake I'd made in killing that man I mentioned earlier. The sisters here in the hospital were pretty definite that I shouldn't exert myself, and after just a teensy escape attempt (not serious, more to see if they'd been told to stop me, which they hadn't), I decided I agreed with them. I was wobbly. Wobbly and shaky, and not sure whether I should feel traumatized or liberated, or some strange mixture of the two.

All in all, I was deeply asleep right up until I heard a click from somewhere near my right wrist.

I'm still not sure whether I think _better_ than a human, but I'm sure as hell faster. It only took me an instant to process the important things about the click. Which were, in no particular order: handcuffs. Police handcuffs, not novelty. (Yes, I can tell the difference by sound alone; don't ask unless you really, truly want to know.) I didn't remember signing up for handcuffs, which meant that someone had bitten off _much_ more than they could chew. The person attaching the cuffs to the bed—

I was already moving before I finished that thought. Swinging the hard, heavy baton-shaped thing I'd found during my excursions, going for a killing blow. Part of me tried to jerk back, to recoil from the act, but the larger part was still moving—

And I missed. Hit only air. I nearly fell out of bed.

I didn't need to open my eyes to see that it was the Doctor. No human would have been fast enough to evade that blow, and besides—besides, I _knew._ He took my improvised club away from me as I struggled for balance and took three cautious steps back. "Sorry," he said, "about the—" Helplessly waving hands. "Cuffs. I thought it might be safer this way."

It was. I could feel a corner of my brain scanning the room for weapons, or weapon-able objects, and coming to the obvious conclusion; there were several, but none of them within reach. Having the handcuffs on meant that the assassin in me had to back off and wait her chance, and that left room for the _me_ part of me to breathe. Liberation through physical restraints. Kinky. Also a bit messed up, but I already knew that about myself.

I smiled and purred, "That depends on what you have in mind."

He waved the club-thing around awkwardly, seriously considered putting it in his pocket, and then tossed it over his shoulder. It made a loud clunk when it landed.

"What is that, anyway?" I said.

"An adjustable-weight physical therapy thingummy." 

"Is that the official name?"

"Brand name, actually. Thingummies Incorporated owns three whole moons in this star system alone."

I studied his face. "Liar."

"Well. Yes." He grinned at me.

God, he had the most marvellous smile.

That wasn't what made me decide to save him. I've known plenty of cute boys; I wouldn't give up my lives for any of them. But him—I watched him, dying and in agony, struggling to save my parents even after I'd already given them up for dead, mourned a little, and moved on. I watched him try to save _me,_ his murderer. I don't have words for how that made me feel. I'm fairly sure I'm not supposed to have those emotions.

And then there was his time machine. _You're a child of the TARDIS,_ he had said, _you can fly her. Go. Now. Before it's too late._ So I ran inside, and went over to that gorgeous steampunk console, thinking _yes, right, fly her_ how, _exactly? There aren't even any labels._ Then there was this moment—this transcendent golden space—

And afterwards, I didn't just know what every switch on the console did. I knew how the TARDIS felt about them. That one, for instance, the dimensional exclusion anchor—the Time Lords had been taught to use it with every materialization, but really, it made as much sense as a handbrake on a horse. I didn't need things like that to keep her from slipping time-tracks. _She_ would steer around the rocks and take me safely through the wildest rapids. The controls were just a way of telling her what I wanted.

There was every possibility, I realized later, that the glorious feeling that the TARDIS gave me had just been a sort of brainwashing. That the Doctor tricked me into his timeship so that it could rewrite my personality, so that it could give me a compulsion to save him and perhaps even turn me into the sort of person who wanted to. It made sense. It even fit with his history. All those human pets with their irrational, unshakable faith in him; perhaps every time he found one he liked, he just—edited her a little.

I didn't believe it for a second, and I _should_ have. I'm supposed to think of these things. Trained for it.

Programmed for it. "Hate to tell you this," I said, "but I'm still conditioned to kill you. If you want anything beyond banter, I hope you brought extra restraints." I pushed myself more or less into a sitting position, a maneuver which the handcuffs made five times as awkward as it should have been. "Nice cuffs. The last time I had any like this, I had to nick them off a policeman. And then I gave them to Amy for her seventeenth birthday, and then she lost the key, and then Rory discovered that it isn't possible to die of embarrassment. I may, possibly, be a bad influence on my own mother."

"I remember those," the Doctor said. I raised an eyebrow at him. "Not like that! It isn't like that, it was never like that. Absolutely none of it is anything like that whatsoever. She cuffed me to a radiator, if you must know."

I rather wanted to nibble on his lower lip. I settled for winding him up instead. "Because . . ."

_"I_ don't know, I was unconscious!"

"Oh, sweetie, this is sounding kinkier all the time."

_"Because—"_ He took a deep breath. "Because she hit me with a cricket bat. Because I was late and I broke into her house and I think she wanted to be sure I wasn't a hallucination and she tests for hallucinations just a _bit_ vigorously, and also there was something about biting psychiatrists."

"Ohhh," I said. "That."

"Yes, exactly, _that."_ He threw himself backwards into the visitor's chair, without looking. Despite all his body language, which read more or less, _I have been transformed into a baby giraffe and haven't located all my feet yet—help?_ he managed not to land on the armrest and hurt himself. "Why did you get Amy handcuffs for her birthday? Am I going to regret asking that?"

"I was a teenager—sort of. Teenagers are supposed to make their parents die of shame. Besides, everyone was expecting Mad Mels to do something outrageous and it seemed rude to disappoint." The Mad Girls of Leadworth, plus one. I had enjoyed that childhood. It made me feel almost human. "Doctor," I said, and was dismayed to hear the overconfidence leaking out of my voice, "why did you come back?"

"You knew you were going to see me again."

"Yes, but I thought I was going to have to work at it. And I thought it would be after I had sorted—" I raised my cuffed hand as far as it would go, making the chain clink. "This. That's why I'm in the fifty-first century, isn't it? Not just because the medical care is good. Because the psychiatrists are better."

"One of the most stable people I know came from the fifty-first," the Doctor said. "After the things he's been through—for me, many of them—he should be a raving lunatic or a sobbing wreck, and he isn't. That's important. At any rate, I came to ask for a favor."

"Hmm . . ." Part of me wanted to say, _name it,_ but I pretended to think. "Well—I killed you, but then I gave you the rest of my regenerations. We're even on that one, I think." He didn't seem happy to be reminded. It was funny; he _looked_ young, but there was something so old in his eyes sometimes.

Me, in this body, I look—they say the word _cougar_ is insulting, but I think I may have to steal it back. I rather like being compared to a gorgeous, deadly predator. It's the way I wanted to look, really. Experienced, old enough to be respected when I need to be, and quite hot. On the inside, underneath the confidence that comes from being simultaneously superhuman and subhuman (and, frankly, a smoking badass), I sometimes feel like a lost little girl.

"But," I went on, "I still owe you for trying to save me from that torture beam. What kind of favor?"

"I'd like to steal copies of all your medical scans. Especially the CNI—Complete Neurological Imaging."

"You're already planning a B&E, but you decided to stop in and ask for permission?"

"Not _breaking_ and entering, why does everyone keep saying that? Just _enterin_ g and entering. And, they're your scans, of course I'm going to ask."

_I may be a sociopath,_ I thought, _but I'm not rude._ My phrase. It was a point of similarity, if you like, only he wasn't a sociopath exactly. He might obey no rules but his own, he might run roughshod over whole armies, but he wasn't like me.

Which was a lonely feeling, because I'd always assumed he was. My nemesis, my mirror image. Voices from long ago: _It's all right, Melody. Of course you can't understand why it's wrong. Morality isn't in your nature._ He was very nearly the same kind of animal as me; what made him so different?

"I'll say yes," I said, "on one condition."

"Name it."

"I want to ask you some questions." He began to shake his head, but I overrode him. "I realize there are some things you can't answer. But I need to _ask._ And if it isn't a spoiler, if it's about my past or just about me—" I swallowed. "I really want to know. Need to know. Please."

His gaze caught mine. "R—Melody."

"River," I said. River was a better person to be than Melody, or even Mad Mels. I didn't know much about her yet, but River was more than a gun to be pointed in the right direction. She might be able to do more than destroy. If I was very, very lucky.

"River," the Doctor repeated. "You never have to beg me for anything."

Utter, absolute sincerity. He didn't just mean it, he Meant It. It made me feel too exposed, so I tried to deflect it, make a joke out of it. "What if I like it like that?"

"You and the fifty-first century are going to get along," the Doctor said. "I can tell. You know what I meant; I'll answer every question I can. What do you want to know first?"

What did I want to know first? Well, when in doubt, start with the easy one. "Why do you want my brain scan?"

"It might help me to help a friend of mine." The Doctor looked down at his hands. "I'm trying to tidy some loose ends. Correct as many of my mistakes as I can, before—events interfere. And not that long ago, there was a woman—" He got up, looked out the window, and smiled sadly at the double moonrise. "Donna Noble. That's her name. Such a marvellous soul, buried underneath all those layers of rudeness and shouting. She made me a kinder man at a time when I desperately needed it. I watched her grow, I watched her go from obnoxious and frightened to a hero like I can only dream of being. At the end of it, she saved the universe." His face went cold and remote. "And then I mind-raped her while she pleaded with me to stop. Took away her memories of her travels. Took away all the changes she'd struggled for. Left her on Earth, where she'd started, with nothing but a ragged hole in her life and a bit of money."

His voice was level and calm, but you can never trust that. I looked at him and blinked. Under the detached facade, there was sheer loathing, of the sort most people reserve for pederasts and serial killers. When he said _rape,_ he meant it. What he had done was exactly that horrific to him. So . . . "Why?"

"She'd undergone a metacrisis. Her mind was mixed up with mine. It's like—" He had turned around now and was moving his hands as he talked. "Like trying to load Apple programs onto a PC. Only these programs try to reformat the operating system for thoughts and senses that most humans don't even have, and they run hot enough to melt the circuits to slag—actually, it's not very much like computers at all. Forget that. The main thing is, it would have killed her." He gave me a lonely, lost look. "She was my best friend, you see. I didn't want her to die. I couldn't _let_ her die."

I could understand that, even though I don't have _friends,_ not in the way that real human beings do. I spend time with my parents because I enjoy being with them, because I'm comfortable with them and it makes me feel good: pure self-gratification, the shallow emotions of a sociopath. If one of them asked me to let them die and I had a clear way to save them, would I respect their decision? Would that even be the moral thing to do? And would I care if it was?

No. No, I wouldn't. I'd save them, and their own opinions be damned. And unlike the Doctor, I wouldn't feel guilty afterwards; I don't really have the capacity. "You want my brain scan," I said, "because I've got a little human in me. You want to know how I can live like this. How I can be stable. I hate to tell you this, but—I'm not sure I always was. My early life is all a bit of a blur, but I think—I think I spent some time in some sort of life support system." And there had been—a struggle? A gunshot? I pressed the heel of my hand against the side of my head.

The Doctor started forward, then stopped well-shy of me. "Don't strain yourself. The brain is a delicate thing. Even yours." I had the oddest feeling that he wanted to come over and rub my temples until the ache went away. "It's okay. I'll get the information I need from the CNI. My turn for a question, I think."

It wasn't the deal we had made, but I was game. You had to expect the Doctor to change the rules on you; it was what he did. "Ask away."

"Why did you say that you've got a little human in you?"

Not one I had been expecting. "Because I do. My parents are Amy Pond and Rory Williams. Unless you're trying to tell me they _aren't . . ."_

"No! No, as far as I know, your parents are Amy and Rory, and they're as human as an extremely human thing. But you—"

I looked at him. "You don't see me as a Time Lord," I breathed. "Do you?"

"You aren't a Time Lord."

It shouldn't have hit me like—like a rejection. Heaven knows I never _asked_ to be what I am. Sometimes I want to feel the things that humans feel. To understand empathy, or love, or even first-date nerves. My consolation had always been that I was a Time Lord, however artificial. And that made me special.

Unless I wasn't. Unless I was just a mistake.

"Your parents are human. Your _genes_ are almost completely human. You could probably have a human child, with—" He looked awkward. "Another human. If you wanted. Not that I'm saying you should. Or shouldn't, for that matter, as it's none of my business, and _besides._ Being a Time Lord was never entirely about genetics. The culture, the language, the moment you look into the Untempered Schism and the way all your senses had changed when you wrenched your eyes away—" He looked very far away, right then. It seemed to take an instant for him to return to the present, and he gave me a slight smile as if he wanted to make sure I wasn't worried about him. "All gone now. Ancient history. But you, you're a new thing in the universe. Human plus—with the emphasis on the _human."_

"If that's true, then—" I couldn't quite keep my voice from sounding shaky. "Why did you _make_ me?"

"I didn't."

"You _did._ You experimented on Amy and Rory, you were trying to make—" I closed my eyes. "Stupid. No. Of course you didn't. Nobody puts themselves through that sort of agony for lab rats."

"You've been told a lot of lies," the Doctor said softly.

"I know. I really should stop being surprised every time I stumble on another one. But I thought—" Never mind what I thought.

Dammit, the most painful question of my life was, _why am I like this?_ and I'd always thought I knew the answer.

But then, I'd always thought I knew who I was, too. I was Melody Pond, the woman who would kill the Doctor. Now it seemed that I was River Song, the woman he asked for when he was dying, and I wasn't even sure who she was yet. I couldn't cut too many more ropes before I was hopelessly adrift—

The Doctor scooted the chair closer, which made a ghastly noise, sat down, and reached out to take my left hand.

"You shouldn't do that," I said.

"I'll risk it."

I put my hand in his. It felt right. His skin was a little cooler than human. There was a bit that wanted to jerk him out of the chair, get him properly within reach, and try to break his neck. But the impulse wasn't that hard to fight down; being cuffed left me at too much of a disadvantage.

"You said that I was a child of the TARDIS," I said. "What does that mean?"

"What did you feel? When you went to fly her, what happened in your head?"

"I don't even really know. I felt this—warmth. This glow, inside me. It was like I was back where I belonged. It wasn't—nobody actually said, _welcome back,_ or _hello,_ but it felt like both of those." And all the hard, cold places in my mind could relax and unknot and be a little less lonely, because I was home and that's what home is about. I was lying; it didn't just feel like _hello_ or _welcome back._ It felt like _I love you._ The whole thing took two and a half seconds. It felt like decades, the earliest decades of my life made right.

I felt like crying from just the memory. And I don't cry.

Well, the occasional bout of crocodile tears when I was very young, from what little I remember. But when you're being raised by people who know exactly how fake your emotions are, they train you out of that very quickly.

"It was a welcome. The TARDIS was glad to see you again." The Doctor's voice was quiet, even reverent. "You won't remember, but you've been there before. You were—made—there."

"You said you didn't make me."

"I didn't."

"Then—" He let go of my hand and became abruptly fascinated with anything that wasn't me. "When you say _made,"_ I said slowly.

"Started. Happened. Amy and Rory—they had just brought me back, you see, and they—after their wedding—on their wedding night, in fact, they—" He made a fluttery motion with his hands.

"Shagged?" I suggested. "Boffed? Boinked? Rogered? Screwed like mad weasels? Played hide-the-salami? Bumped uglies, slapped happies? Had a bit  
of—"

_"Whichever you like!"_

Oo, I'd made him go all _flaily!_ And it was adorable. New life goal: fluster the Doctor as much as superhumanly possible. "So I was conceived on the TARDIS," I said. "That means that this—me being like I am—it's just an accident. Overexposure to Artron radiation, or—" How did I know what Artron radiation was? I could picture it in my head, practically _taste_ what it was about, but I was sure I had never been told. More TARDIS knowledge?

"Or," the Doctor said uncomfortably, "the TARDIS—she's an eleven-dimensional entity who can barely communicate with us temporal beings, and may or may not understand any sort of privacy beyond the mental kind. It's possible that, when she saw two of her humans playing a fascinating game with probability, she decided to—"

"Interfere?"

"I think," the Doctor said, "she would see it as helping. Stacking the odds just a touch to make sure you didn't come out deaf and blind. Or, of course, it's always possible that she interfered because _not_ interfering would prevent you from having existed. Never try to discuss causality with a TARDIS." He studied me—not clinically, but with a sort of faint, wondering smile. "Did you get all the extra senses, I wonder? Or the control?" He dug into one of his pockets. "Call it. Heads or tails."

I sped up my perception automatically until the coin seemed almost to stall in the air. Not an easy test; I would have to work out exactly how many rotations it would make, and there were variables that—

No. No, I wouldn't. "Heads," I said, "on account of it's a double-headed coin."

The Doctor caught it and grinned. "Knew it! You _can_ alter your time perception."

"It's what makes me a perfect killing machine," I said.

The smile went away like a popped soap bubble. "You're not a machine. You could be a weapon, you could be a killer, but you can also be so much more."

I felt like a lost child again, and for whatever reason, that made me suddenly angry. "Tell me this, then. If I'm so very human, why aren't I _like_ them? Why don't I care like they do? I'm not just Amy's child, I'm one of her best friends. I was raised alongside her. And I still know that if it were her or me, I would snap her neck in a heartbeat. If I'm human, _that's evil_. I know that much. I may not have a moral center, but I _do_ pay attention."

He shook his head. "You wouldn't do it."

"I would! If it were her or me—"

"—you would find the person _telling_ you it was her or you, and put them in what I believe is technically referred to as A World of Hurt. Which doesn't actually exist, although there is a world of itchiness and a world of custard."

He had a point. "But—"

"You're talking to the man you brought back from the dead, at the cost of, potentially, four thousand extra years of life. You're going to need some slightly better hypotheticals to convince me."

I— _four thousand._ Well, I thought I might be able to get three or four centuries out of this body if I took very, very good care of it, but—four thousand. Four _thousand?_

More proof I wasn't human; a human would be in hysterics at losing something like that. To me, it didn't even seem quite real.

"But," I said, "there are so many things. Compassion, love—I'm not capable—"

"Who told you that?"

"It's just the way it is. I don't—"

"No. Think about it. Who told you that?"

"I'm not sure," I whispered.

"Do you know what compassion feels like?"

"No, I just told you—"

"Then how do you know you've never felt it?" The Doctor caught my gaze and leaned forward. "Besides, that's a trick question. Compassion isn't something you feel. Or rather, it isn't _just_ something you feel. You do it." His voice went quieter. "That's the secret. That's the key. To step forward and help, even when you feel old and hard and entirely empty of mercy. To act with kindness, even when you think you're nowhere close to kind. Do it often enough, and you _will_ start to feel it again. The hands and the hearts are connected, and not always in the direction you'd think." He smiled faintly. "It works. Trust me."

I really, really shouldn't. I really, really did. "If the _potential_ for emotion isn't there—" I began.

"Oh, it is. It is. They didn't remove your emotions, River. They couldn't, not without breaking you too badly to ever use. But what they could do—what they did do—was steal the names of your feelings and replace them with their own. Sorrow becomes self-pity. A child's sense of fairness is mislabeled selfishness. Love and friendship become mere comfort-seeking. And that changes you, because names are very, very important."

_Don't be silly, Melody. We both know you can't really miss her; it's not in your nature._

_Clever little fibber, aren't we? That's good, Melody. You're going to have to be able to simulate friendship, even though you can't form real attachments._

_Good. Good! Oh, you fake emotional pain so_ well, _Melody. Such a perfect little sociopath; if I didn't know what you were, I'd never suspect. Now, stop playing around and let's get you back in the simulation . . ._

I couldn't put names or faces to the words, but I'd lived with them all my life. Could they really be lies?

I had the oddest urge to let my eyes water. I suppressed it, of course. No sense in having near-perfect control of your body and not using it. "How can you be sure, though? How can you _know?"_

"I know you. I've seen it. Your humanity isn't lost, River. Just sleeping."

Of all the ridiculous things—my eyes were watering anyway.

The Doctor walked over to my bedside and took out a white handkerchief. "Here—"

I grabbed him and pulled him down towards my face, going into fast-time. I'm much, much stronger than I look; I can crush a person's windpipe with my teeth, if I really have to. Even his respiratory bypass couldn't save him forever—

Only, because of the awkwardness of my position, I had grabbed him by the jacket. He really shouldn't have been able to skin out of it from that angle, let alone as quickly as he did. Thrilling to play against him, really—his reaction time matched mine, and he had this knack for not being where he logically ought to be—

Oh, God, I'd almost killed him. _Again._

The Doctor collected his jacket from the floor where I'd just dropped it, looking disheveled. If it had been under any other circumstances, I would have been amused at how dorkily cute he looked with half his hair standing on end. "It's all right," he said quickly. "I'm all right."

I was breathing hard. "That—why did you do that? How could you leave yourself open like that?"

"Because there are things in this universe worth leaving yourself open for."

"Name one!"

A smile, odd and whimsical and entirely sincere. "River Song."

Oh.

I—I couldn't—what the hell do you say to something like that?

He looked away, as if embarrassed. Or, possibly, worried that he was coming on too strong. "I should go. I know that Time Humans need extra sleep after you get injured. Never seen you regenerate before, of course, but I assume the same principles apply."

A Time Human. That's what I was.

And it sounded like he'd seen a bit of me, because he was right about the sleeping. That was promising. That implied that the therapy would work. "I'll fix it," I said. "The assassin programming. I held it off for a little while this morning." Of course, it kept overriding me, too. I hadn't actually _meant_ to hit him with the car, even a little bit; just a near miss to make sure everyone was awake. "I can learn to suppress it entirely. I will fix this." And because I have trouble doing too much sincerity in one go, I made my voice light. "And until I do, we'll always have handcuffs."

This time, the smile looked like happy reminiscence. "We will."

Oh, _really?_ "Why, sweetie, that sounded almost like a spoiler."

Instant alarmed Doctor. "No. No! I didn't mean—did you think I meant—the fact that I keep getting cuffed to things says more about my lifestyle than it does about us, and I didn't actually mean lifestyle _that_ way—"

New life goal: coming along nicely.

I liked him. I liked him a lot. I don't know if it's anything close to normal human love, or even friendship, but it felt scary-strong. He knew me—he knew _about_ me, the things that I'd never told Rory or Amy, my own parents, because I didn't want to take the chance that they'd look at me like I was a monster. He knew about my jagged edges and my coldness, and the desolate places where I didn't even have memories to fill the darkness. And because he was the Doctor, the Lie-Weaver and the Impossible Man, he had to know what it was like to look at the people around you and realize that they were all deeply, easily _breakable._

He knew all that. But he didn't treat me like a lit fuse. When he looked at me, when he smiled at me, it was full of wonderment and affection and teasing.

And although I didn't notice it until later, I think it was right then, watching him flounder, that I decided. He does _not_ get hurt. Not in any universe I'm a part of. Will not happen. Worlds may break and empires may burn, but the Doctor stays safe. And that might be evil, it might be sociopathic, and it might not be proper love. But it's me.

My choice.


End file.
